@Mimosa1
This isn't a forgiving woe, though
I do always tell people this!
My one and a half days slightly off piste (honestly not very - a couple of the kids haribos, a low carb kind snack bar a dried apricot and some watermelon. I mean, clearly not great but not a massive plate of pasta) and bam 500g back on
Well actually, in many ways, the pasta might have been a better option! I think you're kidding yourself that these things were lower in carbs:
- don't know which Haribo you nicked, but looking at the Haribo Starmix, 7 of those would be 19.25g carbs. You say 'a couple' so I'll take you at your word and assume you had 2, straight away that's 5.5g carbs.
- don't know which KIND bar you had, but from what I can see, each bar looks as if they're around 6g carbs
- any dried fruit isn't great (although I do accept that dried apricots are lovely!). Just be aware that they are very high in carbs, at 36.5g per 100g
- watermelon is 6.8g carbs per 100g - don't know how much you had, obviously
If you had all of these over 1.5 days, plus whatever else you had, then potentially that's quite a lot of extra carbs to add in, particularly as they were snacky things. Did you really need them? It's absolutely fine to say you wanted them! That's all part of maintenance and moving back to a higher carb way of eating - but personally I think you would be better slowing incorporating more carbs into your meals rather than introducing snacks at this stage.
that said:
bam 500g back on
That's only just over one pound! So it's hardly a massive gain. You really have to accept that when you reach your target, your body isn't going to magically stick there. You will go up and down - it's part of natural bodily fluctuations, plus the days where you have more carbs may result in an upward movement.
It's coming off again, but clearly maintenance is going to need some careful thinking about. The serious low carb bread is a game changer though as it does feel a lot more manageable with that as an option
You need to set a range of weight that you're happy to accept as your maintenance weight - I'd suggest half a stone (max) above your target weight. Keep an eye on your weight (by daily weighing or weekly weighing, what ever works best for you) and track it to start with, so that you know how many extra carbs you can tolerate.
You also need to know that when you add more carbs than your body can use for immediate energy, it will be stored as glycogen (in your liver and your muscles) and this will add to your weight. Once it's used up (which you can do by upping your exercise a little), the weight will go down again. It's not fat that you've gained here!
But overall, that you're even thinking about your maintenance strategy is really, really good news! You've done really well. Maintenance is actually the hard bit ...
